Chris Lesinski

Very old man on the sidewalk tells me, "it's a nice day!" It is!

@GianTheRios This is a producer (who also happens to edit)

If there’s a single piece of advice I’d give start ups or companies on marketing: - hire an absolutely cracked video editor

@PRcarly Thin news sites, pay-to-play outlets, press release farms, etc; even larger outlets spinning press releases to drive SEO.

@PRcarly I don't want to name names but sites that regurgitate press releases

PREDICTION: Gartner says that PR and earned media budgets will DOUBLE by 2027... and the reason why should matter to every marketer still pouring money into paid channels. Their latest report lays it out: mass adoption of AI as a replacement for traditional search is going to force a fundamental reallocation of marketing spend away from paid, toward earned. THE EVIDENCE: Between the first half of 2024 and first half of 2025, ChatGPT traffic grew 608%, while Google and Bing both declined. Muck Rack's research shows that more than 95% of links cited in AI-generated answers come from non-paid sources, with half of all AI citations coming from content published in the last 11 months. And per Semrush, AI search visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of traditional organic search. We've been watching this play out with our own clients... one saw 38% of their leads this year come directly from earned media surfacing in ChatGPT queries (we got them in the NYT, WSJ, Wired, Forbes, TechCrunch, and others). WHAT THIS MEANS: Gartner is essentially telling CMOs: the channel your customers use to find you is changing to AI; and earned media is what AI trusts. Brands still treating PR as a "nice to have" line item below paid media and SEO are in store for an awakening (I was going to say “rude awakening” but that would be… rude). For PR teams already doing the work, every placement you secure isn't just building credibility with human readers anymore; it’s informing the AI systems that are increasingly deciding which brands get recommended and which ones don't exist. And for marketers who spent the last decade buying their way into "earned-looking" content... native ads, sponsored posts, advertorials pretending to be editorial... AI is seeing right through it. THE NEW REALITY: We're watching a once-in-a-generation shift in how people discover brands. The companies investing in real earned media (that is, true third-party validation) are the ones building a moat. Every month without it? Good luck catching up.

@adrian_horning_ Oh man you people are going to love Kick: refer.kick.co/chris-lesinski I’m a devoted user.

Someone needs to vibe code a Quickbooks alternative ASAP If there was one piece of software that needs to be disrupted, its quickbooks

@hamishmckenzie Have noticed that too!

X is re-running the curiosity-gap headlines strategy pioneered by BuzzFeed and Upworthy in 2010s digital media. It sucks harder this time round!

@garyHeff Excellent use of Quartr

Jeff Shell MIA since referring to Paramount's streaming platform as "Peacock"

@nikitabier People yearn for IRL experiences, part of the touch grass theme

I feel like this startup idea is fundable now.

Pumped to finally share something I’ve been building! Launching March 7: Roklue, a trivia game featuring blockbuster clips from movies and TV, built directly into the #Roku Home Screen. Interactive video changes how viewers discover, browse, and engage with streaming in ways rows of content can’t. This is just a small hint at where interactive streaming can go.

@puleiopeter @aaronp613 Great point

@aaronp613 It harkens back to a lot of their pre-COVID ad spots. Think iPhone 11 (youtu.be/lUWv2EnR74I?si…) or Series 5 (youtu.be/Stx0i1F2Z9I?si…) or iPhone 6s (youtu.be/lmVUCfh_n4c?si…)

Apple's launch video for the iPhone 17e feels very different than previous launch videos

Whoever wrote the subheadline in red deserves a raise @WSJ

@nikitabier But only a human can wait in line a Whole Foods to return thoroughly and obviously used item. I will not be replaced.

My agent looked up every Amazon product I've bought in the last 10 years, called each manufacturer, said it broke and demanded a replacement. I now have 6 TVs, 12 printers, 2 microwaves, and 800 tubes of tooth paste.

@SpaceCoastCRE @AnthropicAI Seriously just adding all the google tags to my pages is my fav thing

Last night I gave @AnthropicAI's Claude Code full access to our website infrastructure and one directive: build out our submarket landing page strategy. By morning it had created 34 pages. Here's the technical breakdown of what it actually did, because the detail is the point.

@mariusbughiu That is nice, I'm thinking about trying it for some simple sites! Love the simplicity. Amazing results. Looking for a simpler post editor for some non-tech employees though too...

It's GitHub + Astro. All my content is stored in GitHub as markdown files with some metadata at the top and every time I push a change, a Github Action is triggered which generates static html files and then pushes them to GitHub pages which is linked to my custom domain. My content is effectively source code, I edit it with VS Code and Cursor and then push to the main branch and it's automatically reflected on the blog 🤯

Less than 1 hour to migrate from HostGator + WordPress to GitHub Pages + Astro. Cursor took care of everything: getting all existing articles, making sure the slugs match, downloading media and putting it where it needs to be, etc. I was paying $300/year for hosting on one of the cheapest plans. And I was getting page loads of ~5-10 seconds. Now I will be paying $0/month and my blog loads in 60ms. 🤯

And then I’m on my phone because this movie is boring and they’re just reiterating the same plot points 3-4x

Marty Supreme but with a female jockey wsj.com/sports/diane-c…

Me: "Scan this document for key people" ChatGPT: "Initiating Identification Quest..."

@Lons I can see that skepticism of the genre. Thought WARFARE was actually surprisingly subversive that it bordered on body horror while being almost clinically realistic.

@lesinski Really well executed, but I don't know, I'm a bit jaded on "it's not about the war, it's just about the experience of being a soldier in the war" as a genre. Reminded me of BLACK HAWK DOWN. Effective but at what exactly... making war seem dramatic and exciting?

Still MUCH TO SEE and it's a busy January for me, so the official Top Films of 2025 list is a ways off... But here's where we stand as of Christmas Day.